


Traitor's Blood

by lyricalballads



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Family Secrets, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26448685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricalballads/pseuds/lyricalballads
Summary: Alex of Tirragen’s nephew uncovers some family history that has long been locked away.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17
Collections: Tamora Pierce





	Traitor's Blood

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a long time ago, back in 2012, I think, but for some reason I never posted it anywhere. So here it is at last! The story is told from the perspective of Alex’s nephew, an unnamed character of my own creation.

Nobody ever talked about Uncle Alex.

The family dismissed his memory completely, as if he had never existed, and Father always avoided my questions when I asked about the uncle I had never met. He died before I was born, killed by the woman they called the Lioness, and my own family may have been willing to tuck his memory into a deep corner where it would never be found, but other people didn't forget so easily. The servants at Fief Tirragen talked, as servants tended to do, and most of them had worked for the family since Uncle Alex was a boy.

They didn't know I listened to their gossip, or else they never would have remarked on how much I resembled my treacherous late uncle. _Uncanny_ , the servants said, when they had their backs turned and couldn't see me lurking in the corridors, snatching up their bits of idle gossip the way mice snatched crumbs that fell on the kitchen floor. _Damned unlucky_ , they claimed, unhappy that I had inherited my uncle's dark eyes, quiet manner, and catlike grace.

At first I hated hearing these comparisons to a man I had never met, but curiosity got the better of me and I listened harder than ever, desperate for the smallest details of my father's oldest sibling. I wanted to know this mysterious traitor whose blood ran in my veins, whose eyes resembled _my_ eyes, even if he _was_ the man responsible for my family's ruin.

The family portrait gallery gave me no answers. I stalked that long, quiet hall from one end to the other, feeling the painted eyes of long-dead relatives staring down at me. The family valuables and oldest pieces of furniture had been sold off years ago, after the king took our wealth away, but the portrait gallery remained untouched. No pictures of Uncle Alex hung in that hall, not even the tiniest scrap of a painting, though his father and siblings and ancestors received fair representation upon the walls.

There was my father Albert at the age of six, posing with his two older sisters in front of the great fireplace in our main parlor. Uncle Alex was away at the palace when the portrait was painted, serving as squire to the mysterious Duke Roger who rose from his grave and nearly destroyed Corus with an earthquake.

And there was my grandfather, Lord Eldred of Tirragen, dark and imposing as he sat astride the horse that played a role in his downfall. The servants were far less discreet when they gossiped about Lord Eldred. An outsider looking at his portrait would have seen an ordinary man with stern features and a neatly trimmed beard, but I could see the redness in his face, courtesy of his fondness for drinking. I could easily picture a bottle in his painted hand, half-filled with the most potent wine from the cellars, or perhaps the fief's strongest brandy. When Father was only ten years old, Lord Eldred took a drunken ride down to Lake Tirragen, fell off his horse, and landed right into the lake, where he eventually drowned.

The family covered it up and said it was a hunting accident.

I gazed into my grandfather's stern painted eyes, lost in thought, until a slight rustling made me turn around. Nessa, the old housekeeper, padded down the hall in search of me, no doubt wondering why I wasn't taking tea with my visiting aunts and cousins. She halted two feet from where I stood, following my gaze to the painted faces from days gone by.

"He hung in this gallery too, you know," she said quietly. "Sir Alexander, I mean. I know you've always been curious about him."

"Where are his portraits?" I asked, sounding more impatient than I intended. "I've never found a single one."

"They're gone," said Nessa. She wouldn't meet my eyes.

"What happened to them?"

"They're gone, lad. Some things in this world are best forgotten."

I scoffed at this. "Nobody's forgotten my uncle, not for an instant. Not while _I'm_ in the house."

"You do look very much like him," Nessa said quietly. She hesitated, waging some private war with herself, and finally met my eyes. "The former Lady of Tirragen, Sir Alexander's mother, ordered the portraits destroyed," she admitted. "I tossed ‘em into the fire upon her ladyship's orders."

I imagined great, roaring flames devouring the image of a woman's eldest son, and wondered how my calm, quiet grandmother could give such an order. I wondered how Uncle Alex could live such a duplicitous life, knowing how it would hurt his family if he were caught.

Perhaps he never imagined that he _would_ be caught.

I crept closer to Nessa, afraid she would scurry off before I could learn anything else. "So that's it, then," I said, pretending nonchalance. "I'll never set eyes on my uncle's face."

She looked away from me, her wrinkled features deep in some thought I couldn't follow, and her reply came out as a murmur I just barely caught.

"Follow me," she said. "But you mustn't tell a soul, understand?"

I didn't care that a servant had just given me an order. I promised Nessa my lips were sealed and followed her through the old family home, down winding rows of stairs until we reached the dark and chilly cellars. I took a few moments to light a candle, wishing I had the Gift to light my way whenever I pleased. The Tirragens were notoriously un-Gifted, as well as notoriously dangerous with a blade.

"This way," Nessa said, her voice practically a whisper. Her mouth was drawn into a tight, thin line as she led me to a battered old trunk that sat forgotten in the furthest corner of the cellar. She fumbled at the ring of keys she always carried, picking through them with gnarled fingers until she found the one she wanted: a thick bronze key stained with age.

"What's in the trunk?" I asked, noting that a thick layer of dust coated the lid. "Why all the secrecy?"

"You should be the one to open it, lad," she said, pressing the heavy key into my hand. "It's your right."

I didn't question her further and fit the key into the lock, half-expecting it to get stuck in the aged metal. It turned with only a little force on my part, sending up a tiny cloud of dust, and I felt like I was raising the lid of a tomb as I lifted the trunk's lid. I feared what I would find.

A painting stared up at me, its face strange and yet familiar at the same time. With Nessa's help I lifted it out of the trunk and propped it up so I could properly gaze upon the face of my Uncle Alex for the first time.

The resemblance startled me. His face was thinner than mine, his skin darker, and his mouth an entirely different shape, but the face in the painting undoubtedly looked like _me_. Uncle Alex stood up straight, almost rigidly so, and stared ahead with no expression at all, his face a calm mask that offered no clue of why he betrayed his king and country. He held a shield painted in purple and black, Tirragen's once-proud colors.

"This was painted not long after he won that shield," said Nessa. "His father, poor man, died two months after the paint finished drying."

Uncle Alex would have been eighteen in the picture, two years older than myself. At nearly sixteen, I should have been serving as squire to some valiant knight of the realm, but the family was no longer noble. Our house was a ghost of its former glory, our name tainted beyond repair.

"I thought you said the paintings were all destroyed," I said.

"I kept this one in secret, just in case her ladyship felt remorse," said Nessa. "It's a sad business, destroying all you've got of your own flesh and blood, even if he _was_ a traitor."

"What was he like?" I asked.

I could gain nothing from the enigma of that dark face staring at me from the painting. A face that had secrets and wanted to keep them.

Nessa's eyes softened as she gazed upon my uncle, recalling a time that I would never know. "He was a bright lad," she said. "Could do figures in his head faster'n anyone I ever saw, and was always scribbling numbers on whatever bit of parchment he could find. It's a pity his father was so fond of his drink..." She trailed off, then abruptly stood up straighter, as if remembering her place. "But that's all in the past now."

She didn't need to say anymore. I supposed I should have hated Uncle Alex for tainting the Tirragen name and stealing my dream of becoming a knight, but instead I felt a deep sadness wash over me as I studied that secretive face. I was sorry that Uncle Alex went so horribly astray, that his father drank and his mother turned her back on his memory, sorry that I would never meet him and ask him why, why, _why_.

This family had too many secrets, too many skeletons crumbling to dust in our wardrobes. I would never discover them all and wasn't sure if I wanted to.

Nessa laid a comforting hand on my shoulder.

"All bad men start out good when they're born, my lad," she said. "It's the world that turns 'em wicked."


End file.
